Tyler_Southwell

Tyler Southwell: An Autobiography I’m Tyler. Born in Anchorage, Alaska, but that feels like a lifetime ago. These days, you’ll find me on the North Shore of Auckland, New Zealand. I write, I research, I consult. My focus? The messy, beautiful, often baffling intersection of human sexuality, relationships, and money. I’ve spent over a decade trying to figure out why we connect, why we disconnect, and how apps and bank balances mess with our hearts. I’m not your typical academic. I’ve been in the trenches, so to speak. And I landed here, in this slice of coastal paradise, to make sense of it all. Look, I’m not here to give you a lecture. I’m here because I’ve been through the wringer. I’ve had my heart stomped on, and I’ve done some stomping myself, I won’t lie. I’ve been the guy with three dating apps open on a Friday night, and I’ve been the guy deleting them all in a fit of existential despair. That’s what gives me the right to talk about this stuff. Not just the degrees (though I have those, from AUT), but the living. The failing. The getting back up. It’s the combination of clinical knowledge and, well, scar tissue that lets me see patterns. Patterns in how we present ourselves online, how we use money as a shield or a lure, how we perform desire. I’m competent because I’ve had to figure this out for my own damn sanity. Growing up, I was this weird mix of Alaskan wilderness and, later, the raw, volcanic energy of Auckland. I moved here when I was 16. My mom, a nurse, got a job at Waitākere Hospital. It was a shock. Swapping snow for sand, moose for... well, more people. One of my first real memories here? Getting hopelessly lost trying to find a house party in Devonport. I was walking down Victoria Road, past the old movie theatre, clutching a warm bottle of Lindauer, feeling completely out of my depth. I ended up on North Head, alone, watching the sun come up over Rangitoto. It was terrifying and magnificent. That contrast—the fear and the beauty—that kind of sums up those years. The awkward fumbling at a party on Takapuna Beach, the first real crush that felt like the world was ending, the all-nighters studying psychology at the AUT library on Wellesley Street, then driving back across the Harbour Bridge as the city stirred to life. It was all there, the seed of what I’d eventually dedicate my life to. This place, the North Shore, it’s in my bones now. It’s not just where I live; it’s the lens through which I see the world. My daily walk is from my flat near Castor Bay, down the steps to the beach. The smell of salt and pohutukawa. The volcanic black sand. It grounds me. I’ll grab a flat white from a café on Hurstmere Road in Takapuna, watch the runners, the young families, the older couples holding hands. It’s a whole ecosystem of relationships playing out in real-time. Later, I might drive out to Milford for a meeting, or sit on the deck of The Patriot in Devonport with a mate, watching the ferries slice across the Waitematā. The city’s rhythm is my rhythm. The way the light hits the Hauraki Gulf in the late afternoon, the way the wind whips through the pōhutukawa trees—it’s a constant, calming presence. It’s the backdrop against which I’ve rebuilt myself. I was born at Providence Hospital in Anchorage, in the middle of a snowstorm. October 6, 1992. My dad, a commercial fisherman, was out in the Bering Sea, so it was just my mom and the nurse. The Northern Lights were apparently going nuts that night—my mom always said I came into the world under a green and purple sky. The hospital room was that specific shade of institutional mint green, and I swear I can still almost smell the particular mix of antiseptic and strong coffee that seems to define Alaskan hospitals. It was cold. Bitterly, bone-achingly cold. That kind of cold gets into you, shapes you. Makes you resilient, maybe. Or just makes you long for warmth. I think that’s why I love the subtropics here so much. It’s a direct rejection of that beginning. That harsh, beautiful, lonely beginning. My past work was... intense. For a while, I was a research assistant at the New Zealand AIDS Foundation, working out of their office on Hargreaves Street in Ponsonby. I was knee-deep in data about chemsex, about the complexities of serodiscordant relationships, about how gay men navigate intimacy in the shadow of HIV. It was heavy. It was real. I’d spend my days with spreadsheets and anonymized case studies, and my nights... well, my nights were my own field research. I was on Grindr, on Tinder, on everything. I saw the gap between the clinical data and the lived experience. The theory and the sweaty, anxious, thrilling practice. That's where my real education happened. Now? I write. For the CamoWallet project on camowallet.app. It’s a perfect fit. I write articles about the North Shore, about dating, about money—tying it all back to how we protect ourselves and connect with others. I write about the best spots for a first date in Devonport that won't break the bank, or the unspoken economics of a relationship when one person is a digital nomad and the other is a tradie from Glenfield. It’s my way of using everything I’ve learned—the academic, the personal, the local—to help people navigate their own messy, beautiful lives. It’s not about having all the answers. It’s about asking the right questions. And doing it from a deck in Castor Bay, watching the tide come in.